What is Musicality?


Hello fellow music lovers,

I am upgrading my system like a lot of us who follow Audiogon. I read a lot about musicality on Audiogon as though the search for musicality can ultimately end by acquiring the perfect music system -- or the best system that one can afford. I really appreciate the sonic improvements that new components, cables, plugs and tweaks are bringing to my own system. But ultimately a lot of musicality comes from within and not from without. I probably appreciated my Rocket Radio and my first transistor radio in the 1950s as much I do my high-end system in 2010. Appreciating good music is not only a matter of how good your equipment is. It is a measure of how musical a person you are. Most people appreciate good music but some people are born more musical than others and appreciate singing in the shower as much as they do listening to a high-end system or playing a musical instrument or attending a concert. Music begins in the soul. It is not only a function of how good a system you have.

Sabai
sabai

Showing 1 response by soundsbeyondspecs

Musicality naturally evolves from familiar musical scales and familiar sounding instruments. Instruments in turn mimick our voices and other interesting natural sounds, emotionally.

My "objective" music system allows me to access and to reach much further into the "subjective emotional performance". The moving emotional drive within the performance is the holy grail of musicality.

Delivering music at home is a triad to me. It starts with the musician's emotional performances, then, the engineers' recording quality, and then onto a well-matched audio system.

Musicality is something like driving a great sports car and feeling one with the roads, or, feeling one with the music, verses admiring the car parked away at a distance. The true holy grail is the changing emotional connections to the road only felt best from behind the wheel. Great musicality is a emotional connection to music that draws me to modern short tunes, or a longer journey like a great album or a jaw-dropping fabulous symphony.